That would be him. Mayor MacDonald. Unfortunately,the guy who ran against him for Mayor died like a month before the election. And the dead guy actually almost won. Petitions are going around and all kinds of groups have come together to ask him to apologize and resign.

Meanwhile, he's basically legitimized open racism and you should see some of the letters-to-the-editor that are being published. We were actually making some progress, but he went and ripped off the band-aid and made a fresh, seeping wound.

Mrs Mang's sister lives in Portland, ME. The only thing I know about the Somalis in Maine is this. A couple of very slender Somali men picked up my niece's impossibly heavy couch and managed to move it out of her deeply inconvenient shaped apartment without breaking a sweat. She was pretty happy about that because no one would dare pick the damn thing up for fear of blowing a disc. The Somalis were happy to make some easy cash.

Any time someone brings up the Somalis in Portland, my brother in law chuckles and says "Man...I still don't know how they got that frigging thing down the stairs!"

I've done some work with a few in my neck of the woods. I've always had a very pleasant working experience with them. And I have to say, they are remarkably resilient, not only having the emotional trauma that comes form what happened in Somalia and the resettlement camps, but living in a foreign new land where there is a very vocal segment who very much doesn't want you there.